


Darkness

by tari_vilya



Series: Drarry Discord Writers Corner Drabbles [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drarry Discord Writers Corner Drabble Challenge, Gen, Neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15429822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tari_vilya/pseuds/tari_vilya
Summary: Draco makes a different choice at the beginning of Half-Blood Prince with heart breaking consequences.





	Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the July Drabble Challenge on Discord. Thanks to erin_riwen, lettersbyelise, timothysboxers and maesterchill for the beta, encouragement and being wonderful.

He lived in the dark. The only light came from a small window high above him. He had once known the light. He remembered like a dream what it was to have the sun on his face. He remembered other people... laughing, talking, yelling, fighting, voices that were not his, voices with new thoughts that existed outside his own head.

Here in the dark there was none of that. Just the buckets that came down from that tiny window, sometimes with food, sometimes with water and then to haul anything he put in back up again. He knew, rationally, that there was someone up there, operating the bucket, but it didn’t seem like it. It felt like it was just him and the bucket and that was all there was left in the world. Him, the bucket and the never-ending darkness.

This was his decision. A choice: to kill Dumbledore and to bear the Mark of the Dark Lord or to stand alone. His mother begged, his father raged, but in the end he chose to stand against the darkness. No one was coming for him. There was no one who would face the Dark Lord on his behalf.

He had long ago lost the ability to scream or to cry. The only sound was the in and out of his breathing. When the echo of incoming footsteps encroached on his prison he didn’t have a frame of reference to know what was coming. The door shuddered against spellwork and then rusted hinges protested loudly. 

“Malfoy!” The invading light hurt his eyes and he couldn’t see. The tumult of noise as people flooded his little cell was an attack on his over-sensitive ears. There was too much going on. He flinched back from hands that were not his own, he couldn’t make sense of the questions thrown at him. It was too much.

“Please,” he moaned, digging the word out of the depths of his memory. The noise and the lights eased around him. 

He looked up into bright green, a colour he had forgotten existed. “Malfoy, what happened?” a familiar voice asked quietly.

“I told him no,” Draco whispered, staring into Harry’s bright eyes. “And I’m not sorry.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15565317) by [tari_vilya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tari_vilya/pseuds/tari_vilya)




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